The Galaxy Primes | Page 7

stuff we'd smash it. On bare ground, the worst we can do is sink in a foot or so, and that won't hurt anything."
"Check. A few tons to the square foot, is all. Shall we strap down and hang onto our teeth?"
"Who do you think you're kidding, boss? Even though I've got to do this on manual, I won't tip over a half-piece standing on edge."
James stopped talking, pulled out his scanner, stuck his face into it. The immense starship settled downward toward the selected corner. There was no noise, no blast, no flame, no slightest visible or detectable sign of whatever force it was that was braking the thousands of tons of the vessel's mass in its miles-long, almost-vertical plunge to ground.
When the Pleiades struck ground the impact was scarcely to be felt. When she came to rest, after settling into the ground her allotted "foot or so," there was no jar at all.
"Atmosphere, temperature, and so on, approximately Earth-normal," Garlock said. "Just as our friend said it would be."
James scanned the city and the field. "Our visit is kicking up a lot of excitement. Shall we go out?"
"Not yet!" Belle exclaimed. "I want to see how the women are dressed, first."
"So do I," Lola added, "and some other things besides."
Both women--Lola through her Operator's scanner; Belle by manipulating the ship's tremendous Operator Field by the sheer power of her Prime Operator's mind--stared eagerly at the crowd of people now beginning to stream across the field.
"As an anthropologist," Lola announced, "I'm not only surprised. I am shocked, annoyed, and disgruntled. Why, they're exactly like white Tellurian human beings!"
"But look at their clothes!" Belle insisted. "They're wearing anything and everything, from bikinis to coveralls!"
"Yes, but notice." This was the anthropological scientist speaking now. "Breasts and loins, covered. Faces, uncovered. Heads and feet and hands, either bare or covered. Ditto for legs up to there, backs, arms, necks and shoulders down to here, and torsos clear down to there. We'll not violate any conventions by going out as we are. Not even you, Belle. You first, Chief. Yours the high honor of setting first foot--the biggest foot we've got, too--on alien soil."
"To hell with that. We'll go out together."
"Wait a minute," Lola went on. "There's a funny-looking automobile just coming through the gate. The Press. Three men and two women. Two cameras, one walkie-talkie, and two microphones. The photog in the purple shirt is really a sharpie at lepping. Class Three, at least--possibly a Two."
"How about screens down enough to lep, boss?" Belle suggested. "Faster. We may need it."
"Check. I'm too busy to record, anyway--I'll log this stuff up tonight," and thoughts flew.
"Check me, Jim," Garlock flashed. "Telepathy, very good. On Gunther, the guy was right--no signs at all of any First activity, and very few Seconds."
"Check," James agreed.
"And Lola, those 'Guardians' out there. I thought they were the same as the Arpalone we talked to. They aren't. Not even telepathic. Same color scheme, is all."
"Right. Much more brutish. Much flatter cranium. Long, tearing canine teeth. Carnivorous. I'll call them just 'guardians' until we find out what they really are."
The press car arrived and the Tellurians disembarked--and, accidentally or not, it was Belle's green slipper that first touched ground. There was a terrific babel of thought, worse, even, than voices in similar case, in being so much faster. The reporters, all of them, wanted to know everything at once. How, what, where, when, and why. Also who. And all about Tellus and the Tellurian solar system. How did the visitors like Hodell? And all about Belle's green hair. And the photographers were prodigal of film, shooting everything from all possible angles.
"Hold it!" Garlock loosed a blast of thought that "silenced" almost the whole field. "We will have order, please. Lola Montandon, our anthropologist, will take charge. Keep it orderly, Lola, if you have to throw half of them off the field. I'm going over to Administration and check in. One of you reporters can come with me, if you like."
The man in the purple shirt got his bid in first. As the two men walked away together, Garlock noted that the man was in fact a Second--his flow of lucid, cogent thought did not interfere at all with the steady stream of speech going into his portable recorder. Garlock also noticed that in any group of more than a dozen people there was always at least one guardian. They paid no attention whatever to the people, who in turn ignored them completely. Garlock wondered briefly. Guardians? The Arpalones, out in space, yes. But these creatures, naked and unarmed on the ground? The Arpalones were non-human people. These things were--what?
At the door of the Field Office the reporter, after turning Garlock over to a startlingly beautiful, leggy, breasty, blonde receptionist-usherette, hurried away.
He